The invention relates generally to call centers and, more particularly, to techniques for analyzing and reporting performance data in a call center.
A call center is a facility that handles telephone calls for an organization, usually using some level of computer control. Typically, the telephone calls handled by a call center are incoming calls from present or potential customers of the organization. The incoming calls are generally distributed among a number of agents within the call center who are each trained to handle certain types of incoming calls. A call center will normally be capable of handling many different types of calls coming into the organization. For example, a call center may be set up to receive calls relating to each of a multitude of different products, product types, or product families sold by the corresponding organization. Alternatively, or in addition, a call center may be arranged to handle calls relating to different services or information dissemination functions provided by the organization. Some such services/functions include: taking product orders, providing customer service, providing pricing and/or availability information, or any of a variety of other functions. Many other types of calls can also be handled by a call center. The types of calls that are supported by a call center are commonly referred to as the xe2x80x9cskillsxe2x80x9d of the call center.
As can be appreciated, management of a large call center can be a daunting task. For example, some call centers support hundreds of different skills and employ dozens of agents. Thus, it is often difficult to track the performance of the call center to identify possible areas of improvement or to devise optimization strategies. Traditionally, operations information relating to day-to-day call center activities has been tracked and stored in a computer memory within the call center. Typically, this information includes individual agent login/logout data, agent skill and skill level information, call handling information such as call duration and time to answer data, and other types of data related to call center operations. However, this information is usually voluminous and is therefore not generally of value to call center managers or others interested in enhancing call center performance. In addition, manual manipulation of these extensive call center records into a useful format for analysis can be extremely time-consuming, inaccurate, and is often not worth the effort.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus for analyzing call center operations data that is relatively simple to implement and that generates useful information for enhancing call center performance.
The present invention relates to a system for use in analyzing call center operations data. The system is capable of generating reports that can be used by call center managers and the like to make important decisions that can enhance call center performance. The system allows a user to specify one or more call center parameters and one or more call center skills for analysis. The system then analyzes operations data for the call center using one or more heuristics to identify one or more representative working days for the call center corresponding to the specified parameter(s) and skill(s). Once a representative working day has been identified, the system analyzes operations data for that day to identify groups of agents having common skills and common skill levels.
The occupancy of the identified agent groups are then developed from the operations data for subsequent reporting to the user. The occupancy of an agent group is related to the amount of time that agents within the group were xe2x80x9clogged inxe2x80x9d within the call center during the corresponding representative day. Once the occupancy information has been determined, the system allows the user to generate various reports indicating agent composition and occupancy levels within the call center on each representative working day. These reports can then be used by call center managers or others to support call center decision-making activities and/or to identify areas within the call center that require adjustment or personnel-related changes. Because the system is computer automated, the analysis is performed relatively rapidly and the results are accurate and consistent over time.